Voice Search has quickly become an important part of SEO, and it definitely won’t be going away. A vast number of consumers now use Voice Search to look for products and services online, as it’s much more convenient than typing.

If you optimize your content for voice search, you’ll drive more traffic to your website and get your SEO ranking to a whole new level. Not everyone is embracing it yet, so you will also gain a competitive edge.

Here are the most interesting stats to help you understand the scope and importance of voice search.

Trends

Many emerging trends are fueling voice search and completely transforming SEO and the way we use the internet. Each of them stems from a simple fact that we speak much faster than we type. So, it’s only natural that we turn to voice for efficiency.

• ComScore reports that more than half of all smartphone users are engaging with voice search technology in 2020.
• A Gartner study predicts that 30% of all browsing sessions will include voice search by 2020.
• Adobe released survey data that found 48% of consumers are using voice for “general web searches.”
• Google reports that 27% of the online global population is using voice search on mobile.
• According to Econsultancy, only about 13% of all searches on Google are from voice search.
• Google’s voice search on mobile devices is now available in over 100 languages.
• Google’s speech recognition technology has a 95% accuracy rate when the spoken language is English.
• After analyzing 10,000 Google Home search results, Brian Dean found that it takes an average of 4.6 seconds for a voice search result page to load.
• Technavio predicted that the voice recognition market will be a $601 million industry by 2019.
• Since 2015, mobile searches have surpassed desktop searches, one of the driving factors behind the growth of local search.
• 32% use voice search daily for something they’d normally type into a search engine.
• 29% use voice to ask for quick questions daily.
• 33% use voice search to play music daily.
• 35% use voice search to check news and weather daily.
• 31% use voice assistants to send texts or emails daily.
• 16% use voice assistants to control other devices daily.
• 19% use voice to check traffic or for navigation daily.
• 40% use voice assistants to control other devices every month.

• Mary Meeker’s internet trends report found that almost 70% of searches were done using natural or conversational language.
• The average voice search result is easy to be written in natural language and is easy to understand (typically written at a 9th-grade reading level).
• 41% of people who own a voice-activated speaker say it feels like talking to a friend or another person, per Google.
• As far back as 2016, Google reported that 20% of searches on its apps and Android devices were performed using voice search.
• Voice speaker buyers are estimated to top 25.6 million in 2020.
• 34% of people who do not own a voice assistant are interested in purchasing one.
• 1 in 4 shoppers used voice assistants in their holiday shopping during the 2017 season, per CTA.
• According to NRP and Edison Research, 1 in 6 Americans owned a smart speaker in 2018.
• 1 of every 4 American homes equipped with Wi-Fi owned a smart speaker in 2018, according to Nielsen.
• Voicebot.ai reports that over half of all adults have used voice search, with 33% using voice search monthly in early 2019, jumping up from 25% in 2018.
• 82% of customers research products and services online before making a purchase.
• 11.5% of smart speaker owners make purchases by voice monthly.
• 72% of people who own voice-activated speakers say that their devices are used as part of their daily routines, per Google.
• 65% of people who own an Amazon Echo or Google Home can’t imagine going back to the days before they had a smart speaker. For many people, smart speakers are not just devices, but part of a lifestyle.
• 65% of 25-49 year-olds speak to their voice-enabled devices at least once per day. The 25-49 year old demographic is the most likely to perform daily voice searches, followed closely by 18-24 year-olds, and 50+ year-olds, respectively.

• The number of millennials who use voice-enabled digital assistants climbed to 39.3% in 2019, per eMarketer.

• Up to 43% of voice-enabled device owners use their device to shop.
• Consumers across age groups are using their devices to assist with making purchases — a 41% increase in 2018 alone.

• 2 in 5 adults use voice search once daily, per Location World.
• About 1 in 5 adults use mobile voice search at least once monthly, per Global Web Index.
• 25% of individuals ages 16-24 use voice search on mobile, per Global Web Index.
• Individuals ages 26-35 represent the highest percentage of smart home device owners, per Walker Sands.
• On average, more men than women use voice search at least once per month.

Future

There’s a huge buzz around voice search all over the planet, and the global voice search market is only going to continue to grow. There is no slowing it down, especially now when smart speakers are taking over the world.

Let’s see what the future holds for voice search.

• Today, the global voice search market share is being disrupted by China. Alibaba’s voice assistant is reportedly better than Google’s. Its advanced features can detect implicit intent like asking for another delivery address when a customer will not be home during delivery hours.
• Baidu is claiming that its voice assistant is already in 200 million devices worldwide.
• Globally, smart speaker installed base was over 200 million in 2019 from 114 million units in the previous year.
• Global smart speaker sales will surpass $30 billion by 2024. Smart speakers will soon be among the top-selling consumer electronic products.
• Among smart speaker owners who regularly use them, 62% will make a purchase using voice technology in the next month.
• One in five consumers (19%) have made a voice purchase through Amazon Echo or another digital home assistant, and another third (33 percent) plan to do so in this year.

• A 166% growth in the installed base is expected in Mainland China by the end of the year.
• Japan’s installed base is expected to grow by 131% this year.
• The US is expected to retain the lead when it comes to adoption, having around 42.2% of the global market installed base in 2019.

• The US is expected to retain the lead when it comes to adoption having around 42.2% of the global market installed base in 2019.
• Smart speaker sales are expected to overtake tablet sales in 2021.
• Voice shopping is expected to rise to $40 billion by 2022 from just $2 billion in 2018.

• Growth in the segment is driven by homes using smart speakers, rising to 55% from 13% in 2018.

• Consumer spending through voice assistants is predicted to reach 18% by 2022.
• 61% of 25-64 year-olds say they’ll use their voice devices more in the future. The 18-24 demographic mirrors this trend, with 57% saying they’ll increase their voice device usage in the coming years.

• Half of all online searches will be voice searches by 2020. The voice search revolution is dramatically altering how consumers engage with businesses and continued change is expected.
• By 2020, 30% of web browsing will be screenless. This will create a fundamental shift in how consumers interact with brands online.

Specifics

Smart speakers are all the rage now, but other voice-enabled devices aren’t lagging too far behind. People use them daily or rather frequently to search for brands online.

They especially use voice search to discover local businesses. Dive into the specifics to get a clear insight into the trend.

• Google Assistant is now available on more than 400 million devices, per Google.
• Amazon and Google account for 94% of all smart speakers in use, per Strategy Analytics.
• While the Apple HomePod understands 99.4 percent of all queries, it only answers 52.3 percent correctly, putting it behind Amazon Echo (64%), Google Home (81%), and Harman Kardon Invoke (57%) in that regard, per Loup Ventures.
• 70.6% of Americans who used a voice-enabled speaker at least once a month in 2017 used an Amazon Echo, per eMarketer. 23.8% used a Google Home.
• Voice search accounts for 25% of searches conducted on Windows 10 taskbar, per Purna Virji of Microsoft.
• 93% of consumers are satisfied with their voice assistants. The top benefits consumers cite for using voice speakers are the ability to multitask, get instant answers to questions, and make their lives easier.
• The average voice search result contains only 29 words.
• Nearly 20% of all voice search queries are triggered by a set of 25 keywords. These consist mainly of question words like “how” or “what” and adjectives like “best” or “easy”.
• 52% of smart speaker owners are interested in receiving info about deals, sales, and promotions from brands.
• 58% of U.S. consumers had done a local business search by voice on a smartphone.
• 76% of smart speaker users perform local voice searches at least weekly. 46% of users perform voice searches to look for information on local businesses on a daily basis.

• 58% of consumers have found local businesses using voice search.
• 51% of consumers use voice search to research restaurants. This is the most commonly voice-searched business, though consumers research a broad range of businesses on their voice devices, from hotels to doctors to insurance companies.
• Mobile voice-related searches are 3x more likely to be local-based than text-related searches, per Search Engine Watch.
• 28% of consumers go on to call the business they voice searched for. This is the most common action following a voice search since it allows consumers to continue interacting with brands via their voices.

• Future opportunities in audio advertising may increase as consumers appear to be looking to lessen their time with screens.
• Calls will influence $1 trillion in US consumer spending this year.
• Phone calls convert to 10-15x more revenue than web leads. Calls are the most valuable conversions marketers can drive from voice searches.
• Callers convert 30% faster than web leads. Calls provide a more immediate return on your digital marketing investment.
• Caller retention rate is 28% higher than web lead retention rate. Driving calls from voice searches are also more profitable in the long-term – callers are more loyal than web leads.

Conclusion

All of these stats clearly show that voice search isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, if ever. More and smarter devices will keep hitting the market, making voice search an absolute breeze. This means that more people are going to leverage this useful feature and further influence the global market growth.

Have you started optimizing your content for voice search? The time to do it is now! The sooner you begin optimizing, the sooner you can reap the fantastic benefits. Start with these crucial stats in mind and harness the full power of voice search!

Sources:
https://www.dialogtech.com/blog/voice-search-statistics/
https://financesonline.com/voice-search-statistics/
https://serpwatch.io/blog/voice-search-statistics/
https://www.dialogtech.com/blog/voice-search-statistics/
https://www.dbswebsite.com/blog/trends-in-voice-search/
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/04/10/voice-search-statistics-2018
https://searchengineland.com/nine-voice-search-stats-to-close-out-2019-326884